This page features brief excerpts of stories published by the mainstream
media and, less frequently, blogs, alternative media, and even obviously
biased sources. The excerpts are taken directly from the websites cited in
each source note. Quotation marks are not used.
Source: Time
September 5, 2008
The Republican Georgia Rep. doesn’t back down from his Thursday quote labeling the Obamas “uppity.”
Says in a statement: “I’ve never heard that term used in a racially derogatory sense. It is important to note that the dictionary definition of ‘uppity’ is ‘affecting an air of inflated self-esteem — snobbish.’”
Source: Telegraph
September 3, 2008
A decade ago, two graduate students from Stanford University in California
sat in a Burger King, having breakfast. Larry Page and Sergey Brin were
celebrating, albeit frugally: their plan to turn a novel technique for
mapping the internet into a business had attracted its first $100,000 of
funding. The payee's name on the cheque - the name of the company they
would formally found on September 7, 1998 - had been agreed that morning:"Google, Inc".
Nowadays, if they wanted to treat them
Source: National Parks Traveler Online
September 3, 2008
Is the salvation of our natural souls tied to the preservation of
wilderness? And if it is, must we actually travel into the wilderness to
achieve its benefits, or is it simply enough to know wilderness exists? As
the Wilderness Act turns 44, how much has it done to protect nature?
An ancillary question, of course, is whether only officially designated
wilderness meets the bill, or whether de facto wilderness is just as
beneficial a salve?
Enacted September 3, 1964, the Wilder
Source: National Parks Traveler Online
September 4, 2008
In 1970, Indians led by United Native Americans (UNA) organizers occupied
South Dakota’s Mount Rushmore National Memorial for more than a week and
asserted the right of the Lakota (a Sioux tribe) to reclaim the Black
Hills. On August 29, the 38th anniversary of the occupation’s onset, a
small group of Lakota peacefully gathered at the memorial’s amphitheater
to share cultural experiences and commemorate the historic event.
The historical roots of Native American displeasure with Blac
Source: NYT
September 4, 2008
OMORI, Japan — Home to a silver mine whose production peaked nearly four centuries ago and finally closed in 1923, this tiny rural town in western Japan once seemed doomed to suffer the fate of so many former boomtowns. Perhaps one day, after the last of the die-hards had moved away and the town’s abandoned wooden houses had been ground to dust, the surrounding thick forests would have simply swallowed up Omori.
But after intense lobbying by Japan, the Iwami Silver Mine here, which
Source: NYT
September 2, 2008
NABATIYE, Lebanon — The children crowd forward around the glass case, eager for a glimpse of the martyr’s bloodstained clothes. His belt is here, and the shoes he died in, scarred with shrapnel. The battered desk where he planned military operations still has his box of pencils on it, his in-box, his cellphone.
“May God kill the one who killed him,” an old woman says, wiping tears from her eyes as she stares through the glass.
The dead man being shown such veneration is
Source: History Today
September 5, 2008
An ancient monument taken by Mussolini’s Italy in the 1930s has been restored in Ethiopia. The c.4th-century Axum obelisk was returned to Ethiopia in 2005 in three blocks. Weighing over 150 tonnes, it has been reassembled in the northern town, once the centre of a prosperous kingdom. The president and prime minister took part in the ceremony to unveil the restored monument in what is Ethiopia's millennium year in the Coptic tradition. The obelisk was taken in 1937 by the Italian army during thei
Source: Spiegel Online
September 3, 2008
Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzon has begun looking for information on Franco's victims in preparation for a possible court case. Victims groups are thrilled, but not everyone is happy about stirring up the country's fascist past.
It is a monument visited by hundreds of thousands of people each year. On Sundays, some travel from nearby Madrid to lay wreaths at the site. But just what the memorial, known as the Valley of the Fallen, stands for is not entirely clear.
Officia
Source: BBC
September 5, 2008
The United Nations has launched an initiative to have the marshlands of southern Iraq listed as a world heritage site.
The ancient wetlands, believed by some to be the site of the Garden of Eden, were drained and virtually destroyed by Saddam Hussein's government.
But more than half of the area has been restored in a UN project over the past four years.
The Iraqi Environment Minister Narmin Othman welcomed the plans.
She said the marshlands
Source: Times
September 5, 2008
An Oscar awarded for the 1942 military documentary Prelude to War, which President Roosevelt described as a film that “every man, woman and child in the world should see”, has been returned to the US Army. The documentary was made by Frank Capra a few weeks after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. The film won an Oscar for Best Documentary by the US Army Special Services but the statue, left, disappeared in 1970. It was found after being offered for a Christie’s sale and was returned
Source: Telegraph
September 4, 2008
Elvis Presley fans have been given the rare opportunity to buy the only authenticated set of his fingerprints in existence, as long as they have £75,000 to spare.
The black ink prints are on a gun permit application for the state of California, completed by the singer in 1970.
The form, signed Elvis A Presley, requests permission to carry a Colt 38 revolver and a Beretta 7.6 automatic.
It contains confirmation of his sex, hair and eye colour, height, weigh
Source: Telegraph
September 5, 2008
Five men demanded £4.25 million for the safe return of a Leonardo da Vinci painting, a court has heard.
The Madonna With The Yarnwinder was taken from Drumlanrig Castle, near Thornhill, Dumfries and Galloway, in August 2003.
Robert Graham, 56, John Doyle, 59, and Marshall Ronald, 52, all from Lancashire, appeared at the High Court in Glasgow along with Calum Jones, 43, from Kilmacolm, Renfrewshire, and David Boyce, 61, from Airdrie in Lanarkshire.
The me
Source: Telegraph
September 5, 2008
A giant tribute to the former Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin made from thousands of trees has been spotted on Google Earth.
The message, which translates as "Lenin is 100", was cut into a forest in a remote region of Siberia. Each letter is around 80 metres high, and the entire message stretches for 600 metres.
It was created by Russian woodcutters in 1970 to mark the centenary of the Communist leader's birth, according to EnglishRussia, the blog which spotted
Source: WaPo
September 5, 2008
The book ... says that the U.S. troop "surge" of 2007, in which President Bush sent nearly 30,000 additional U.S. combat forces and support troops to Iraq, was not the primary factor behind the steep drop in violence there during the past 16 months.
Rather, Woodward reports, "groundbreaking" new covert techniques, beginning in 2007, enabled U.S. military and intelligence officials to locate, target and kill insurgent leaders and key individuals in extremist grou
Source: LAT profile
August 31, 2008
Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is as complex as the place she calls home. Plucked from near-political obscurity to become Sen. John McCain's running mate, Palin either has pitch-perfect political instincts or has benefited from a spectacular run of luck that has landed her in the ultimate right place at the right time.
It is easy to see why McCain was drawn to her; their political resumes have much in common. The 44-year-old Republican has sold herself as a political maverick willing to bu
Source: WaPo
August 31, 2008
One night in 1957, during his junior year at the U.S. Naval Academy, John Sidney McCain III found himself in trouble, an incident that destined him for yet another tense discussion with his frustrated father. While on liberty, he and a couple of classmates had gotten into an argument at a Washington park with a group of guys from nearby Georgetown University who'd tried crashing an impromptu party that McCain and his friends were having with a few girls. An exchange of insults escalated to pugna
Source: Media Matters (liberal watchdog group)
September 4, 2008
On the September 3 broadcast of San Francisco radio station KSFO's The Lee Rodgers Show, Rogers said of Takeru Kobayashi, six-time winner of the Nathan's Famous Fourth of July International Hot Dog Eating Contest in Coney Island, New York, "Just eat, eat, eat, and you gain no weight. Oh, there is no justice. God needs to take a hand in this." Co-host Tom Benner, known as "Officer Vic," agreed and added: "Even things out. Wait, that's socialism, I'm sorry. Forget it."
Source: Catholic News Service
September 3, 2008
Israeli archaeologists uncovered the remains of two distinct southern walls of ancient Jerusalem on Mount Zion, establishing the size of the city during Jesus' time as well as during the Byzantine period.
At a Sept. 3 press conference archaeologists from the Israel Antiquities Authority said locating the two city walls corroborates their theory about the southern expansion of the city during these two periods.
The two separate wall segments had been discovered and exca
Source: BBC
September 4, 2008
The Paralympics have come a long way from its humble beginnings as a
rehabilitation programme for British war veterans with spinal injuries.
Back in 1948, Sir Ludwig Guttman, a neurologist who was working with World
War II veterans with spinal injuries at Stoke Mandeville Hospital in
Aylesbury, began using sport as part of the rehabilitation programmes of
his patients.
He set up a competition with other hospitals to coincide with the London
Olympics in that year.
Over t
Source: BBC
September 4, 2008
Germany has introduced a new multiple-choice citizenship test that every
immigrant has to pass to gain a German passport.
Across the country, schools and adult education centres have already
started offering citizenship classes.
As well as taking the test - introduced on 1 September - migrants must
fulfil other conditions such as having sufficient command of the German
language, no criminal record and an income independent of social welfare
At a school in Berlin's Reinickend
